Page 15 of His Curvy Temptation

I smile.

“Believe it or not, I do know how to cook,” I say. “I enjoy it a lot, actually. Wish I had more time for it.”

She looks at me with interest.

“What?” I ask, reading her expression. “You’re surprised that a guy like me is handy in the kitchen?”

“A bit,” she says. “You seem more like a power tools kind of man, I guess.”

“I like power tools too,” I say. “Just carpentry and little house projects, though. I don’t fix up cars or stuff like that. Nothing frustrates me more, actually.”

“So you don’t fix your own cars,” she nods. “What about driving them? Do you drive your cars?”

“Not in the city,” I say. “Again, it’s about efficiency. New York City traffic is disgusting. I’d rather hire a driver to deal with that while I get some work done on my phone.”

“Makes sense.”

“When do you graduate?” I ask, wanting to get off of the topic of myself.

“In a few weeks,” she says. “Assuming I pass all of my exams, of course.”

“I’m sure you will,” I reply. “You seem smart.”

“You think?” She asks.

“You’d have to be smart to be able to balance school and a job at the same time,” I say. “And after completing massage therapy school too. That’s not easy to do. You seem hard working as well. In my experience, smarts and hard work go together well. You’ll be successful, no doubt about that.”

Her cheeks color a little and I feel pleased knowing I’ve managed to make her blush.

“So,” I say. “Are you studying business, then?”

“I am,” she says. “What did you study?”

“Nothing,” I admit. “I had the option to attend college after I served — paid in full and everything.”

“So why didn’t you?”

I shrug.

“I guess I was ready to be done with working for somebody else,” I reply. “Done taking orders. And that’s sort of what school is. Someone telling you what to learn and when. Assigning work to you with a deadline attached. And then you get your grades and it’s someone else telling you how well you did, whether you’re allowed to continue on to the next thing. I felt like it would drive me crazy to go right back into that kind of thing.”

“That makes sense,” she says. “So…you just went right into the real world and started your own business?”

“I did.”

“That’s incredible,” she says. “Look at what you’ve built. It’s amazing. And you got what you wanted. You are your own boss. Nobody tells you what to do, I bet.”

“You’re right,” I agree. “Nobody has told me what to do in a long time.”

“But you tell other people what to do,” she says.

“I do,” I grin. “Feels good.”

“I guess my goal is to be in a situation like yours too,” she says. “I mean…obviously I don’t expect to be as…successful as you are. But I’d like to run my own spa one day, instead of working for these chains all over the place. I’d like to step back and just manage things instead of performing the services myself.”

I nod. It’s a shame, in a way, because Andy is without a doubt the best massage I’ve had. But she seems made for different things; I can tell just from watching the way she talks. She’s got that fire in her eye, the same one I have, and I can tell she’s going to go far in business. She’s determined enough to get this far; she’s got what it takes.

“Mr. Stone,” Andy says. “Can I ask a question?”

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